NHERI - article: Big Growth in Homeschooling Indicated This “School Year”

 The National Home Education Research Institute just published an article on Big Growth in Homeschooling Indicated This “School Year”.

Here is the summary:

The nationwide homeschool population has been growing at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past several years (Ray, 2020). However, it appears that state governors’ restrictive lockdowns in response to a perceived health crisis, institutional schools’ responses, and parents’ and children’s experiences with crisis institutional schooling at home during the spring of 2020 will drive an accelerated and notable growth in homeschooling this coming school year. I have been telling the media that my conservative estimate is that there will be a 10% growth in the absolute number of homeschool students during 2020-2021 school year. If 10 percent materializes, that could mean roughly 2.75 million K-12 homeschool students during 2020-2021. Time will tell. 

 Regardless of the change in numbers, many new parents and children will be introduced to and enjoy the many benefits of homeschooling. If they take a reasonable and relaxed approach – and not try to reproduce institutional classroom schooling at home – they will experience a learning environment and educational process that includes more flexibility, parental involvement, customization, social capital, mentoring, value consistency, one-on-one instruction, tutoring, mastery learning, individualization, teachable moments, family time, calmness, safety, academic progress, healthy social interactions, and local community involvement than if they were involved in institutional schooling (Murphy, 2014; Ray, 2017).

It will be interesting to see just how many parents take the plunge.

Dr. Brian Ray (of the NHERI) was recently on MSNBC, with some homeschooling tips in MSNBC and New Homeschool Parents: Don’t Flip Out and Get Stressed. Relax. Covid-19 Tips.